In recent years, communication assistance systems have been proposed. Communication assistance systems assist development of human relationships based on how close hobbies and preferences of one person to those of another. For example, Non-Patent Document 1 discloses one example of conventional communication assistance systems.
The communication assistance system disclosed in Non-Patent Document 1 aims to make two people acquainted with each other over time. More specifically, this communication assistance system first searches for two people with similar preferences and an agent who can mediate these two people. Here, whether or not their preferences are similar is determined based on their life patterns in the past, e.g. whether or not they have visited the same place.
This communication assistance system then judges whether or not the three people who have been searched for are at the same place, and when judging that the three people are at the same place, urges the agent to mediate the two people with similar preferences.
In this way, the communication assistance system disclosed in Non-Patent Document 1 provides an opportunity for the two people with similar preferences to be introduced to each other via the agent. This makes it easy for the two people who are introduced to each other to communicate with each other, compared to the case where they have to initiate conversation with a stranger who shares similar interests.
Although the communication assistance system disclosed in Non-Patent Document 1 aims to assist communication in a real space, it can likewise assist communication in a virtual space such as a social networking service (SNS).